The Trail to Buddha's Mirror - Don Winslow [51]
The first gallery was in the hotel and looked unlikely, but it was a good place try out a new lie.
“Good morning,” Neal said to the clerk behind the glass counter.
“Good morning. Are you enjoying your stay in Hong Kong?”
She was a Chinese woman, in her mid-forties, Neal guessed, and she was wearing an elaborately embroidered padded jacket that looked more like a uniform than her own clothing. The gallery sold a lot of jewelry and cloisonné and exhibited some large oil paintings of Hong Kong subjects: the view from Victoria Peak, Kowloon at night, sampans in the harbor. They seemed more like expensive souvenirs than artistic expressions.
“Very much,” Neal answered. “I’m hoping you can help me.”
“That is what I am here for.”
“I’m a private investigator from the United States, and I am looking for this woman,” he said, handing her a flyer.
She looked at it nervously. “Oh, my.”
“The woman, Li Lan, is an artist. A painter, to be precise.”
“Is she in some kind of trouble?”
Some kind.
“Oh, no, quite to the contrary. You see, I represent the Humboldt-Schmeer Gallery in Fort Worth. We would like to discuss a major showing of Miss Li’s work, but she seems to have changed her place of residence and we cannot seem to locate her through normal channels. Hence the reason for my disturbing you. Would you, by any chance, happen to know her?”
“There are so many artists in Hong Kong, Mr. Carey…”
“As there should be in a place of such beauty.”
“I am afraid I do not know this one, and I am sure we do not sell her work.”
“Thank you for your time. May I leave this flyer with you, in case you should remember something?”
“Yes, of course.”
“My telephone number is right there.”
“In the hotel … very convenient.”
“There is of course a modest reward, and a healthy sum of money in it for Miss Li, if we can locate her.”
“I understand.”
So will Miss Li, if she gets the word. The name Neal Carey will ring a clanging bell. Hi, remember me? Last time you saw me I was dead.
He hit three more galleries in the next hour, working his way north up Nathan Road. None of them sold Li Lan’s paintings, nor had the staffs ever heard of her. Neal made a turn south and headed back down, picking up four more galleries on side streets before he got back to the hotel. The first clerk dismissed him perfunctorily as unlikely to buy anything, the second was a polite young Chinese man who displayed great interest but offered no useful information. The third was an avant-garde place where the young owner thought she might have met Li Lan at a gallery showing on the island once, and the fourth spoke no English at all, but took a flyer. During this entire walk, Neal caught a glimpse of Ben Chin only once, and another time he thought he saw the Doorman in a crowd of people in front of him.
Neal stopped at the hotel desk to check for messages. There weren’t any, so he headed south down Nathan Road, into the heart of the expensive tourist district of Tsimshatsui. The day had turned hot and sunny. Tourists, shoppers, and the regular denizens crowded the sidewalks. Neal visited three galleries within the next six blocks. Nobody in any of them had ever heard of an artist named Li Lan, and nobody recognized the woman in the photograph. Neal left the flyers behind.
Two hours and four more shops found him down at Star Ferry Pier, the southernmost point of Kowloon. He could see the gray skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island ahead of him across Kowloon Bay. Victoria Peak loomed above the high-rises like a watchful landlady. Neal spotted the Doorman ahead of him on the runway to the ferry. The Doorman glanced at him nervously, his eyes flicking ahead to the ferry and behind Neal to his boss. Neal read the gesture: Was he planning to board the ferry and cross over to Hong Kong Island? That would take special arrangements. Neal pivoted back toward Nathan Road and strode away from the pier. He could feel rather than see Chin’s net shifting northward, and knew that the Doorman would be running to retake the lead position. Neal slowed down to make his job a little